Bob Gilbert
Bob Gilbert is the author of Ghost Trees and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Passion in Plants. Airing on BBC Radio 4, Mon 06 April – Fri 10 April at 9.45am.
Ghost Trees – an urban nature book telling the story of an East London borough through its trees, past and present – is out now.
Bob Gilbert is the author of The Green London Way (Lawrence & Wishart, 2012) and has written a column for Ham & High on urban wildlife for the last twenty years. A regular contributor to TV and radio, including Natural World and BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, Bob has also been a stand-up comedian, a long-standing campaigner for inner city conservation and chair of ‘The Garden Classroom’, a charity that promotes environmental education in London.
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Even in the brick and concrete heart of our cities, nature finds a way. Birds and mammals, insects, plants and trees – they all manage to thrive in the urban jungle, and Bob Gilbert is their champion and their chronicler. He explores the hidden wildlife of the inner city and its edgelands, finding unexpected beauty in the cracks and crannies, and uncovering the deep and essential relationship that exists between people and nature when they are bound together in such close proximity. Beginning from Poplar, the East End area in which he lives, Bob explores, in particular, our relationship with the trees that have helped shape London; from the original wildwood through to the street trees of today. He draws from history and natural history, poetry and painting, myth and magic, and a great deal of walking, observing and listening. Beautifully written, passionate and defiant, Ghost Trees tells the secrets and stories of the urban wildscape, of glorious nature resilient and resurgent on our very doorsteps.
Prizes and awards
Wainwright Prize, 2019 Longlist; Rathbones Folio Prize, 2019 Longlist
REVIEWS OF Ghost Trees
“Informative, enjoyable, enchanting. A book that, in the best sense, educates. It is well written with the occasional alliterative poetic cast. It is a book full of delights which makes one look again, achieving the mystic’s gift of seeing the ordinary as anything but.” Kevin Scully, Church Times
“Ghost Trees will awaken any Londoner to the plants that cling on in the city’s cracks.” Guardian: Books of the Year
“Lyrical and beautifully evocative … in a language as rich and lilting as the contours of the estuarine land … A delight.” Richard Jones, BBC Countryfile magazine